Advice from a sage about America and its future. Listen to this man.

Summary: This morning’s post looked at the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) as an example of the Republic’s decay. To more clearly see this process, this post consults an expert who knows America, has personal familiarity with such things, and writes with the perspective of time and distance. We should listen to his words.  {Part 2 of the 2 posts today.}

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
— Attributed to Otto von Bismarck.

Contents

Part one (this morning)

1. Partners at the creation
2. The Trans-Pacific Partnership

Part two

3. The fall of the old regime
4. Conclusions
5. For More Information

(3) The fall of the old regime

“Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
— attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson.

The slow-mo Bush-Obama reformation of America’s political structure exploited the twin shocks of 9/11 and the Great Recession. But their successful rapid and massive changes required our apathy and passivity, plus the low vitality of our institutions (especially Congress and the press).

Such decay is commonly seen in history. In Caesar: A Biography Christian Meier describes something similar during late Republican Rome, as its people no longer wished to carry the burden of self-government. This post turns to Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859). He describes a similar period in The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution (1856) — writing about the transformation of his own nation, the final acts of which he saw. These paragraphs could be written today (that’s bad news).

The character of the people

This passage describes the hard times preceding the French revolution, but in a different way also fits our times, as increasing inequality and slow economic growth erode away the middle class. The Boomers begin a retirement for which they’re largely unprepared, while many Millennials face downward mobility — lives less prosperous than those of their parents.

In such communities, where men are no longer tied to each other by race, class, guilds, or family, they are too ready to think merely of their own interests, ever too predisposed to consider no one but themselves — to withdraw into a narrow individualism where all public good is snuffed out.

Despotism, far from fighting against this tendency, makes it irresistible since it deprives all citizens of shared enthusiasms, all mutual needs, all necessity for understanding, all opportunities to act in concert. It confines them to private life. They were cooling in their feelings for each other; now despotism freezes them solid.

… every man feels endlessly goaded on by his fear of sinking or by his passion to rise … Almost no individual is free from the desperate and sustained effort to keep what he has or to acquire more.

The decay of institutions

The ancien regime was a monarchy, we have a republic — but all polities have similar life cycles as their legitimacy and vitality waxes and wanes.

… {the political institutions} still existed but offered nothing more than an empty show. Their legal conditions appeared to be as vigorous as ever — the magistrates they appointed had the same names and appeared to perform the same functions — but the activity, energy, shared patriotic feeling, virile and productive virtues which they inspired had vanished. The ancient institutions had inwardly collapsed without losing their original shape.

… The people who were not taken in by a vain pretense of freedom stopped taking an interest in government and lived within their own walls like strangers. Occasionally magistrates attempted, without success, to revive the patriotism which had led to so many wonderful achievements in the past, but they closed their ears. The most important concerns {of the nation} no longer affected them.

{The leaders} wished that {the people} would vote whatever they believe necessary to maintain the empty charade of a free election; they stubbornly kept away. History has no more common spectacle than this. Almost every ruler who has destroyed freedom sought to keep its outward form, from Augustus through today. Thus rulers flattered themselves that they would be able to add to the moral authority which comes from public consent those advantages which absolute power can alone bestow.

(4) Conclusions

“Nothing is written.”
— Lawrence of Arabia in the 1962 film.

The decay of the Republic’s political institutions doesn’t mean that America will become a despotism like Rome; it could become a de facto plutocracy. It does not mean we will have a revolution like France’s; such incompetent elites are rare. It will not prevent America from growing richer; just that this wealth will continue to flow mostly to the 1%. It will not prevent America from remaining the world’s hegemon, bringing no benefit to most Americans (just as the British Empire did little for the British people).

The technology revolution now under way will create fortunes for some, or prosperity for all. It’s our choice, for good or ill, because the Republic’s political machinery remains powerful — although unused. It needs only our energy to make it work.

(5) For More Information

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See the other posts with insights about America from Alexis de Tocquiville. Here are all posts about Obama, his administration & policies, and about Reforming America: steps to new politics. Also see these posts about New America…

1. Obama repeals Magna Carta, asserting powers our forefathers denied to Kings.
2. Let’s honor our generation’s greatest leader, one of the chief builders of a New America.
3. We live in the America Bush Jr created, a break with our past.
4. The 1% build a New America on the ruins of the old.
5. A Tale of New America: a judge burns the Constitution.
6. On Memorial Day let’s admit what we’ve done to America & begin its reform.